It's as dramatic as a Gok Wan makeover, this surpising collaboration between Aussie producer/artists, Pnau, and our revered gay icon, Elton John. He came across them in Sydney a few years back, shortly before we fell in love with their project incarnation as Empire of the Sun. Early Auguat saw the release of 'Good Morning to the Night' as one of five official music themes to accompany the Games. With Elton's ethereal vocals and the sweeping chords of Pnau electronica, it's a classic gay dance anthem.

The first official song by Muse was released earlier. Titled "Survival", it was exclusively written for the Olympics 2012 and will kick off the program. In our typically honest opinion, you'd need the endurance of a marathon runner to survive the 4+ minutes of the dreary anthem. It' has echoes of Queen on a bad day, not that they ever had one! The other songs due for release come from an eclectic mix of artists: Delphic, Chemical Brothers and Dizzee Rascal..

Anyway, back to the Elton/Pnau album. The Aussie boys have done a fine job of creating an uplifting dance album by splicing together slivers of his 70's songs, generally quite obscure ones, to create something as wierdly affecting as their "Walking in a Dream" hit album. Look out for hints of Pink Floyd majesty, retro-funk disco beats and and some dubby atmospherics to whisk you straight to Balearic bliss. It's already a huge hit!

“Oh my God, it’s insane! We’ve just found out we’ve gone number one in the UK! How surreal is that? Two boys from Sydney met Elton John and now we’ve gone number one,” says Peter Mayes, speaking from London.

It is indeed a moment of triumph and the culmination of an all-consuming collaboration that has been in the works for several years now. While Pnau, which consists of Mayes and his best friend and longtime collaborator, Nick Littlemore, has enjoyed Australian success with both their own studio albums – 1999’s Sambanova, 2007’s Pnau and 2011’s Soft Universe – and their side-project, Empire of the Sun, international success has, until now, remained elusive.

“Elton found us in Sydney, " Mayes adds, "somewhere around 2007 or 2008, if I remember rightly. He bought 100 copies of our record and sent it to all his friends. As you might imagine, he has some pretty influential friends and then soon after we moved to the UK. He encouraged us to do that and then he took over our management soon after that. A couple of days after they took us on, they were like, ‘We’re going to give you all of Elton’s multi-tracks and you’re going to make a record,’ and we were just like, ‘What? That’s incredible!’”

Lustralboy says: Enjoy the first fruits of the incredibility right here.

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